Happily Ever After
by Dea Liberty
Summary: She could forever imagine the handsome prince on a shining white horse coming to save her broken soul. Warnings: DARKFIC! Contains suicide and cutting. DHr


**Happily Ever After**

**Disclaimer:** Harry Potter, characters, names and indicia are trademarks and copyright to Warner Brothers and JK Rowling. All events and actions contained here within are fictional works of the author herself, unless otherwise stated; this is purely in the author's mind.

**Warnings:**  This fic contains adult themes, such as suicide, cutting and **_character death._** **YOU HAVE BEEN WARNED. **The author accepts no responsibility should this fic offend anyone's ideals.

**Pairings:** Draco/Hermione

**Rating:** R

**A/N:** Written for the **D/Hr Valentine Gift Exchange (The Enemy's Valentine). **Just want to say many thanks to my beta **Kagome,** without whom this fic wouldn't be anywhere near this standard!! Happy late Valentines, everyone, and I hope you enjoy this.

**Happily Ever After**

To say that things were complicated would have been like calling a bottomless hole deep, but there was no other way to describe it. 

Complicated.

_Very _complicated.

She closed her eyes as the cool night air caressed her cheeks, her lips, her eyelids like an icy-fingered lover.

Her mouth curved up into a mockery of a smile at the thought. __

_Icy-fingers indeed.___

He was not just icy-fingered, her lover, his whole existence was ice.

Cold.

Indifferent.

Untouchable.

Yes; he was so very much like ice. The difference – a difference she had not been able to discern until it was far too late – was that he did not melt; no matter how she tried to warm him, he _would_ not melt. 

But he was a first class actor. There was no denying the fact that he was good. He was too good. He had made her believe – and he had been her downfall.

~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~

Hermione couldn't believe that it was over. A year after the downfall of Voldemort, his reign of terror was finally coming to a close: all confirmed Death Eaters had been convicted and sent to Azkaban, and families were being reunited with lost loved ones.

Those who fought in the war were finally allowed to return home; at last, they were free to live their life however they wished.

The first thing everyone was doing was going back to their families, and she was no different.

Smiling, she raised her hand to knock on the door to her beloved home, her sanctuary and haven as a child. She had not been back here in over five years. 

It had been far too long.

Just as her hand was about to connect with the door, the wood swung open to reveal a small blue-eyed brown haired girl, staring at her innocently from underneath long lashes. 

Hermione was stunned. She felt as if she was looking at herself twenty odd years ago – except for the blue eyes. They were not her eyes. They were not her father's eyes – or her mother's eyes.

That could mean only one thing.

"Eleana, is there something wrong, sweetie?" a woman's voice could be heard shouting from where, Hermione knew, the kitchen was – and it was coming closer. 

A young woman, who could be no more than thirty, opened the door fully, blue eyes widening as she saw the stranger standing on the doorstep. 

She stared, and Hermione stared back. No one moved. 

"Elisa?" 

It was _his_ voice. There was no doubt about it. How many times had she heard him singing her lullabies – _"…smiles awake you when you rise…"_ – ? Praising her achievements – _"…my little girl did all that on her own? Isn't she…"  –_ ? Telling her bedtime stories – _"…and they lived happily ever after…"_ – ?

A gasp, "Hermione?" then a sigh, "I'm sorry."

There was to be no happily ever after here. 

~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~

A tear slipped unnoticed down her cheek as she remembered her father's words.

They thought she had died, and had argued endlessly, trying to find someone to blame for their daughter's involvement in a war of which they heard nothing; they blamed each other. In the end, they had divorced, unable to face the memories that came to them when they were together, and had both moved on. 

They were not her family – not anymore.

She wondered, briefly, if they'd miss her at all – but no; to them, she had died years ago.

She fingered the object in her hand, carefully.

What about her friends? No. They wouldn't miss her either; after all that she'd done, they would be happier anyway.

She was not a friend – not anymore.

~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~

She wanted to go to see Harry and the rest of the survivors of the War. But she couldn't. She couldn't bring herself to face them. She was a coward. And she didn't want to intrude.

All the survivors had gone home to be with their remaining family and mourn the dead, and Harry was at the Burrow, with the people he had called his family.

She had no right to be there; she was the reason they were a few members short. She had been careless, and arrogant; and Ron – sweet, courageous, loyal Ron – had paid the price: he had died protecting her.

No, she had no right to show her face at the Burrow, not now, not ever.

She looked up from her desk at the Ministry to see what the sudden commotion in her department was all about.

Draco Malfoy.

Draco Malfoy in all of his Malfoy arrogance strode through the halls of the Ministry, the sea of people parting to allow him through. After the beginning of the War, the Malfoy heir had disappeared, and was rumoured to have been killed. Apparently, it was not so.

As if feeling her gaze, his head snapped up and their eyes locked.

Time stopped. Past and present collided to create a whirlwind of emotion: surprise, anger, fear, malice, lust – emotions from past, present and future combined and crashed together, and all there was, was heat: a scalding, burning, intense heat such as she had never felt in her life.

And, as suddenly as it had come, it was gone.

Time resumed, and Draco Malfoy sauntered past as if nothing had happened.

And Hermione realised that she was incredibly, and inexplicably, aroused.

~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~

She didn't see him again for months. 

After he had gone, she had had to go into her office and lock the door.

She had come crying his name.

He had left her needing to know what it was that he had been doing for the duration of the war, craving another look from those burning eyes, longing for a touch of his hand.

And of course, wanting to know what had transpired between them with the single glance.

She had never been unable to solve any problem that had been presented to her. She hated enigmas more that anything in the world. Her thirst for knowledge had had her fixated on anything she could not solve until she had been able to find all the answers.

By the time she saw Draco again, five months later, she was obsessive.

But then again, he had had that planned to. He had always known which buttons to push.

She raised her hand and examined the object within it carefully.

The knife glinted softly as the moonlight mocked her despair.

~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~

She was sitting in a small but classy café, not that far from her house, the next time she saw him. He was wearing a simple pale blue shirt and grey slow slung trousers, walking casually towards her, his sunglasses hiding his eyes from her.

She felt drawn to him.

Not half an hour later, she found herself being kissed roughly against the kitchen counter in her flat, her legs nudged apart by his knees, and her skirt pushed up around her waist, her underwear discarded somewhere in the flat.

Those lips, lips she had dreamt of night after night, burned her skin like freezing ice over a blazing wound as he trailed kisses of fire over her body. Every place he touched seemed to flare up with a flame she had thought dead, leaving a smouldering path behind, craving his attention, his touch, just once more, just a minute more…

She had never felt more alive. Her spirit raged with a fiery fury she had not known it possessed; her body arched to his every caress, sensitised and in tune to each movement he made.

No, she had never felt more alive.

And all of a sudden it was gone, leaving her with an empty feeling, a void in her soul that cried out, needing to be filled – but with his touch, and his touch alone.

He had fucked her brutally and forcefully, and left her panting. 

Without waiting out the afterglow, he had apparated away.

She didn't get her answers.

~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~

She laughed cynically, mirthlessly, at herself. She had been so naïve, so easy to fool! He had no intention of ever telling her where he had been.

That first time was the way it always went.

He would be kissing her before she had a chance to ask – and would have apparated away before she had recovered her energy.

That was the way it was. And that was the way it had stayed.

He had fed her small bits of information – or _sob stories_ rather than _information_ – enough to keep her interested and curious…and hung on him.

She ran the tip of the knife almost lovingly over her skin, tracing the vein on her left arm. 

But she had been content with that – for a while – content with the obsession and infatuation.

That was not the way it stayed.

The fascination turned into something more; something that she could not control. 

The lust turned into love.

And love has no reason.

~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~

"Draco, what happened?" she asked as he wandered in, looking more wary than she had ever seen him. She was at his side within seconds. "Are you alright?"

"Yeah, Hermione, I'm okay now." He smiled charmingly at her. "It was nothing much. I just ran into the Weasley girl."

"What happened with Ginny?" She demanded eyes glinting. "What did she do?"

"She was the reason I had to get away, Hermione. She was the reason I lost my estate, the reason my name is dust, the reason I can't ever get a distinguished, well-paid job – that's all her doing. Seeing her…it just…well…it brought up painful memories of a time I had nothing. You understand, don't you Hermione?"

The anguish in his voice broke her heart; the sincerity in his grey eyes pierced her soul. She moved instinctively towards him.

"Of course I understand, Draco. Of course, love."

She didn't notice the gleam in his eyes.

~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~

"Hermione." 

Ginny's voice was cold – but not as cold as her own heart, her feelings for the girl she had once considered her sister.

"Ginny." Her own voice was sickly sweet; coated with honey and sugar.

Ginny stepped back, surprise flittering across her features briefly before being schooled back into a disinterested mask.

"Why are you here?" Again, the voice was emotionless.

"To kill you." She matched the other girl, tone for tone. 

Shock, horror, fear, anger played their way across the younger girl's face, as her mouth opened in a silent scream. The sound never made it past her lips; Hermione sank a dagger straight into her heart. 

"For Draco," she whispered.

Ginny had made Draco suffer and Ginny had to pay the price.

"For _my_ Draco."

~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~

The tears flooded faster and faster down her face as she remembered Ginny's glassy eyes, the sound of running footsteps, Molly Weasley's tears, Harry's shocked expression, Arthur's distraught voice calling for his daughter – his baby girl – his _innocent_ baby girl….

The visions of the pain and suffering she had caused to all those she had once considered friends, family rolled on endlessly, one after another, giving her no break from the pain, no freedom from the truth – the truth that had hit her violently and suddenly as she stared into the accusing eyes of her former best friend.

The scene was so familiar. It was those same eyes that had looked at her that same way as the same family cried over their youngest son – the son she had inadvertently killed. He had died to protect her – because she had trusted Draco.

Yes – that was it! Suddenly, it was all clear to her – the link between the two deaths became clearer to her than any crystal. Draco had tricked her. Draco had played her for a fool. And now he had left her alone….

~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~

She positioned the knife along her vein.

He had lied.

She sunk the knife – the same knife she had sunk into Ginny's – dear, sweet Ginny's – heart – into herself.

He had used her.

More tears leaked from beneath closed lashes.

And he had left her alone.

She drew the knife straight down her arm, cutting deeply although not as deep as the cuts and scars in her soul – it would be enough. 

Her life flooded past her consciousness in a river of crimson.

The last thing she saw was Draco standing before her, grey eyes looking at her. 

The last thing she heard was Draco's whispered "I'm sorry, Hermione."

She didn't know what for, she didn't _want_ to know. This way she could dream. This way, she could forever imagine the handsome prince on a shinning white horse coming to save her broken soul.

But her prince was a moment too late.

There was to be no happily ever after here either.

**_Finite Incantatum_**

**__**

**A/N:** Anyway, D/Hr shippers, please do not kill me. I was just fulfilling the requirements of the gift (but I always seem to write dark!fics with this pairing anyway…) and also, I'm not a serious shipper…Excuse my harsh and unfeeling Draco, but I usually slash; it's hard to write two different kinds of pairings with the same character!!

Nevertheless, please leave a review and tell me what you thought of this! Comments are adored; flames are ignored, as always.

~*Dea*~


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